


our own katabases

by katadesmoi



Series: old songs [1]
Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Post-Canon, and also explore how Hadestown works in relation to actual greek myth a bit???, and also see hades work through his emotional issues, anyway i had fun doing this and that's what matters lmao, don't mind me just giving this musical a happy ending :), i just really needed to see eurydice yell at hades a bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 08:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19459969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katadesmoi/pseuds/katadesmoi
Summary: For once, Hades isn't waiting out spring alone.Alternatively: if Hades had known Eurydice was gonna be such a goddamned nuisance, he would've just let her go.





	our own katabases

**Author's Note:**

> so hadestown really did a number on me and uhhh this is the result i guess

The train has left.

Hades stands on the platform with some indescribable emotion twisting right beneath his heart, while his wife gives him a final sad wave from the window. He hasn't come to the station to see her off in years. The train fades into the dark, and leaves Hadestown sitting in curious hollow silence. The hum and clash of the factories brought to a halt, by that poet, now long gone.

Hades lingers there, longer than he knows he should. He should wrangle the workers back in line, set them back on task, come down hard with an iron first before another riot can bubble up again. They know he's weak. The poet showed them the cracks in his wall. But he cannot bring himself to leave the platform, just yet. Another train should be coming soon. Either the girl will be on it, or the poet will have succeeded. He has to know which one it is.

He's not waiting alone. The idle dead are watching too. They're keeping their distance, some vestige of his authority keeping them at bay for now. When the train finally pulls into view, the whole of Hell holds its breath. Charon opens the doors and the ghosts stream out, mingling aimlessly on the platform. They instinctively give Hades a wide berth as he steps towards the doors, heart in his throat. Wild hope springs up when he recognises no faces, when he cannot pick the girl out from the ghosts flooding forth. The tide ebbs, the last stragglers jumping down from the carriage. Behind him, a murmur is starting among the workers, a cautious excitement rising up in the air. Did he do it? Did Orpheus conquer his doubt?

"Is that the last of them?" Hades asks Charon quietly.

"No," the ferryman rasps.

And Hades looks up in time to see Eurydice stagger on to the platform.

Shock ripples through the crowd. The shades part around her. One of the workers cries out in anguish; a raw sound that wrenches hard at Hades' heart. He steps towards the girl. She looks up at him, expressionless, numb. Hades says, "You're back."

"He didn't wait," Eurydice says, her voice strung thin.

Hades cannot bear to look at her for another moment. He turns on his heels and strides away.

-

He drives the girl from his mind in the same way he drives away the pang of his wife's absence: work. And there is so much to be done now, in the wake of the poet. Orpheus' song woke something in the dead, and they have not ceased their demands, even now that Orpheus is gone. Hadestown has ground to a halt. There will be more riots soon, and Hades is just one king. But he's always been a pragmatist, and he's not above a strategic compromise. There will be better hours, and wages, and overtime, and leave. New contracts with fairer terms. He'll build better machines, cleaner and safer, to improve the working conditions. It will take time, but the god of the dead has plenty of that.

And if he keeps himself busy, just maybe he'll make it through the spring. Even better, he'll forget the lost girl on the platform, forsaken at last by her poet.

-

Eurydice is not hungry anymore.

Time passes so strangely, here. There are a few days where nothing seems to happen. The workers gather at her side, perhaps to comfort her, perhaps in some hope she might tell them how they might escape. Hades has gone, apparently shut in his office without emerging since her return. Hadestown sits idle and stagnant.

She cannot bear to leave the platform. She cannot bear anything, alongside the weight of her sorrow. She doesn't know what she's mourning: the chance at freedom, or Orpheus. Oh, Orpheus. His absence gapes somewhere in her ribcage. She wants to curl in on herself and let the earth grow over her.

The Fates come to fetch the workers after a while. It could be hours, or days. Eurydice half expects to be herded back into the factories along with them, but the Fates just give her a last pitying look before leaving her to her silent mourning. Ahead, Hadestown stutters unsteadily back to life.

More trains arrive, and more souls with it. They stream past her, some pausing to watch her with curiosity. They chatter among themselves, incomprehensible, their speech stolen somewhere along the railway line.

Why hasn't Hades come to fetch her yet? Why has no one put her back to work?

Is it because he pities her?

Or maybe, she thinks, he cannot face her. She is a reminder that Orpheus failed. And Eurydice isn't blind; she saw how moved Hades was by Orpheus' song, and the way the king and his wife had danced to his music. Doubt had wrecked Hades' marriage once, and perhaps he saw Orpheus as a way of proving it could be conquered. Orpheus had failed. Doubt always came in. And now Hades was alone in his city of iron and fumes, waiting on the wintertime once more.

She waits. She watches the smokestacks billow up into the darkness. The amber glow of fire and molten steel. It's changing, she realises one day, when a great crane swings across the skyline and lowers the roof of one of the factories. The fumes dissipate. The fires dampen. Hades is dismantling Hadestown, piece by piece. A warmth flutters to life inside her. Maybe Orpheus hadn't failed after all. Maybe he still had a gift to give.

With new strength, she stands. Her legs ache, and her joints are stiff from disuse. But she steps off the platform and walks down into the city. The air is clearer already. The dead are not listless and weary - she catches a few smiles, the occasional peal of laughter. All eyes turn to her as she passes, and she fights the urge to shrink in on herself at the attention. The steam whistle - the signal of a shift ending - rings out above, and a couple of workers stream out, wiping sweat from their brows. She recognises a few faces - and they recognise her. A hand on her shoulder, a congratulatory smile.

Her brow furrows. "You're all still working?" she asks, her voice raw with disuse.

"Aye. But we got proper hours now, and time off. Thanks to that boy of yours," one of them says.

"We owe it all to ya. Shame both of ya didn't make it out," says another.

"Yeah," Eurydice says quietly, overcome by a wave of emotion. She doesn't know if she's happy or sad. Maybe she's just shocked. Even watching that first factory come down, she still hadn't quite dared to believe Hades had really changed his heart. But all around her is something that had once been foreign in Hadestown: joy.

-

She picks up a few shifts in the factories, when she’s able, but she feels so heavy that it’s hard to keep going. And what would she spend the wages on, anyway? She doesn’t need to eat anymore.

Instead she goes wandering. Beneath Hadestown’s iron shell are ancient bones. A hundred forgotten places waiting to be uncovered, filled with the ancient dead. Where the western stretch of the wall is being torn down, she clambers through the rubble into an endless field of ghosts, listless and unseeing. They part around her like long grass as she walks, chattering softly to themselves. She walks so far out that the susurrus rises around her like a gathering tide, too loud, building like it may crash down upon her at any minute. She’s struck by a sudden fear that the shades will notice her, an interloper, and tear her limb-from-limb like Pentheus. When she returns to the city, she finally understands why so many of the dead choose to stay, despite the work – the wilderness beyond is unfathomable. Centuries upon centuries of souls left in Asphodel for eternity.

To the north, she finds that the underworld is not quite as barren as she once thought. There is a lush peach grove at the edge of a clear pool, each tree stooped low with the weight of the pale fruit. She finds a man standing motionless beneath their branches, up to his knees in the water – Tantalos, she realises, as the peach trees recoil of their own volition from his outstretched hand. On the other side of the pool sits a huge bronze basin perched on a rocky ledge. A crowd of women carrying heavy-laden hydrias pour water into it, only for the water to stream out onto the rocks again, through the small holes perforated in the metal. These are the Danaides, then, whose Sisyphean task is simply to fill the basin, again, and again, and again.

She finds Sisyphos himself, straining against that great rock. They say he escaped death twice. Eurydice feels an odd sense of kinship with him, on Orpheus’ behalf. She watches the boulder cascade back down the cliffside, and Sisyphos slump after it, ready to begin his task anew. He is nothing but sinew and bone now, hollow-eyed, breath rattling in the cavity of his chest like wind in an empty house. Still, he places each crooked hand on the rock, and starts to push.

Sisyphos, Tantalos, the Danaides. None of them shy from the hope of freedom, despite the endless futility of their tasks. Perhaps they’ve been going for so long that they don’t know how to stop. Perhaps the underworld has stolen their memories and their voices, and all they can do now is continue as they always have. But Eurydice lingers at the side of the cliff until Sisyphos looks up at her. Eyes hard as flint, bright and beetle-black in their sockets, spiteful and unflinching. This is not one of the mindless shades who drift in Asphodel. Again, she’s reminded of Orpheus: some people just don’t know when to quit.

-

And then, she finds the garden. Well, _garden_ is a strong word for the overgrown tangle of brush and thicket she stumbles on. The gate is rusted shut and held fast by curls of blackberry thorn, so she hauls herself up over the brick wall instead. This is in the nicer part of the city, right at the riverbank, closed off from the billow of smoke and the noise of machinery, by the great looming shadow of Hades' palace. Eurydice harbours no illusions about what this place might once have been - it has to have been Persephone's. No one else would dare keep a garden so close to the city.

Maybe it's spite for the foundries and warehouses just a few blocks away, even as Hades' relentless industry comes to an end. Maybe it's because she misses the springtime above. But Eurydice shoves open the rotted door of the nearby shed, pulls out a rusted sickle, and gets to work.

She starts by pruning everything in sight with vicious abandon. The gate is revealed, and the rest of the shed, and a lovely mechanical fountain shaped like a rose in full bloom. A network of pipes, long-dry, once irrigated the garden beds and fed the fountain. There's also a generator crusted in lichen against the north wall, which seems to power some arcane lamp that hangs from a post over the garden. Eurydice has to climb the wall and shimmy her way to the top of the pole in order to get a good look at the thing - an artificial sun, likely. She scavenges some old wires and uses those to repair the old circuits, and nearly electrocutes herself when she tries to turn the thing on. Lucky she's already dead.

The pipes are a little easier to handle. They're fed from the river, and all it takes is to clear the drain before water is running through them once more. She uses a wrench to tighten up the pipes where over-eager tree roots have pushed them aside. When the fountain finally sputters to life, she feels a surge of triumph.

Eurydice's always had a head for mechanics, so the pipes and wires come naturally to her. But the plants? She'd never really had the chance to try her hand at gardening. She's committed herself now, though, and she's determined to follow at least this through. She returns, day after day, to water and prune and replant. She pulls up weeds from the roots, dumps great barrowfuls of spiderwort in the compost heaps. She treks back out into the fields of Asphodel to steal fresh peaches from Tantalos' grove, and plants the stones in the dark earth once she's finished eating them. The fruit tastes as good as any from above, even though she doesn't feel hunger anymore. There's something bittersweet about finally having an unlimited supply of them, now that she can no longer starve.

Eventually, flowers start to bloom, faster than any above ground. Time here sticks and flows like honey. There are pale calla lilies and vibrant narcissus, heliotrope and nasturtiums. Eurydice's peaches sprout beneath the artificial sun, which still flickers a little thanks to her decidedly haphazard wiring skills. She returns every day to trim and water the garden. The garden blooms, and Hadestown heals.

One day, she has a visitor.

"What are you doing?" comes Hades' subterranean voice, sending a cold shiver up her spine.

She looks up to see him standing at the gate, staring around at the blooming garden like he's seeing a ghost.[1] There's not a wrinkle out of place in his pinstripe suit, but she can still see a shadow of the man who she'd met at the platform weeks ago. She's surprised he's managed to avoid her for this long. She stumbles to her feet, shaking soil from her hands.

"A pipe burst," she says automatically, gesturing to the steadily growing mud puddle she's currently trying to reign in. Her feet squelch. Next to him she's filthy, and she suddenly feels utterly undignified in front of the king.

Hades looks around at the garden. The budding flowers, the bubbling fountain, the winking artificial sun glowing warmly above them. His eyes narrow. "You've been busy."

"Yeah, well, I have a lot of free time," Eurydice says with a shrug. She half-expects him to smite her right where she's standing. But, because at least a minute has passed and he hasn't started shouting yet, she crouches back down in the mud and gets to work clearing the sludge away from the pipe. "Hey, could you pass me that wrench over there?"

She doesn't really expect him to do it, but a moment later he shrugs out of his jacket and fetches it for her. She reaches for it, but he moves it just out of her grasp.

"You shouldn't be here," he tells her. Is she just imagining the tightness in his voice? It can't be easy, she's sure, to find _her_ of all people in his wife's garden. A reminder of Orpheus and his beautiful song.

"If you don't give me that right now, your fancy shoes are gonna get covered in mud," Eurydice tells the king. He immediately shoves it into her waiting hand with an irritated sigh, and steps back to safety. Ha. She busies herself tightening the screws. She can tell he's watching her. "This is Persephone's garden, isn't it?"

Hades scowls at her. "That's not your business."

"Just trying to make conversation," Eurydice mutters, securing the final screw with a grunt. She tosses the wrench onto the grass and squelches over to the fountain to wash her filthy hands. "So what, you built this for her? That lamp looks like one of your designs."

"Yeah. When we were first courting," Hades says stiffly. "Thought it might make her miss the sun a little less."

Was this place that old? No wonder it was in such a sorry state when she found it. Eurydice wipes her hands on her overalls and pulls on her gardening gloves, ready to rescue the poor peach sprouts currently drowning in mud. “Did it work?” Eurydice asks. “It looks like no one’s been here in a long time.”

“She stopped coming here after a while. By then we were so far gone I hadn’t the notion to ask why,” he says, shrugging. A faraway look crosses his face, and it’s like he’s suddenly forgotten to be irritated with Eurydice at all. “I came back here with the idea that I might make it neat for her when she next comes back.”

He misses his wife. That a god could feel such a painfully _human_ emotion is still a foreign idea to Eurydice. She turns away to start digging in the dirt, lost for words.

“How did you find this place, anyway?” Hades asks, pacing the garden to inspect some of the calla lilies in the corner.

“I was just exploring, I guess,” Eurydice says.

“Huh.” Hades seems vaguely dissatisfied with her answer – what had he been expecting? He hooks a finger around the stem of one of the flowers, gently plucking it free. “I suppose I can’t blame you. The underworld is filled with mysteries. I don’t even know them all myself.”

“Really?” Eurydice looks up at him in surprise. “But you practically _are_ the underworld.”

“Not all of it. There are pieces older than me, from more ancient gods that came before,” he pauses, and then adds with a wry smile, “Everything was young at some point, including myself, believe it or not.”

Eurydice laughs a little, despite herself. She thinks of Asphodel, and the endless field of ghosts she found. There were so many, centuries upon centuries, that a time _before_ Hades is unthinkable. Before she can figure out how to reply, Hades is speaking again.

“I’m surprised you got the lamp working again. I had all the other generators like this one decommissioned years ago.”

“Like I said, I’ve got a lot of free time,” Eurydice says with a shrug. She feels a little swell of pride at the compliment to her work, though.

Hades looks amused. “I can see that. What will you do when you’ve got nothing else to tinker with?”

“Oh, I’ll find something, I expect,” Eurydice says airily.

There’s a pause, while she transfers the drowning peach sprouts to their new homes in the dry soil. Then she goes on.

“I was actually thinking about building a table and some chairs. Nothing fancy, just to make a place to sit,” she continues, smoothing the dirt at the base of the sprout. Without thinking, she goes on, “This might sound strange, but I thought Orpheus might like to sit here to write his songs. You know, when he finally comes back.”

Hades doesn’t respond. She looks up, and sees that he’s watching her, face unreadable. Eurydice swallows. She shouldn’t have mentioned Orpheus, not so soon. The wound is still open and it’s bad enough that _she’s_ here, intruding on this place, but then she had to go and bring him up like that—

Hades clears his throat. "I think you’d better go. I appreciate the work you've put into this place, but all the same, it would be best if you didn’t return."

Shouldn’t have said anything at all. Eurydice curses herself. And then she feels a stab of irritation. What right did he have to kick her out like this? Weeks of anger come creeping back in – she hasn’t spoken with Hades since the platform, has she? Since he set that cruel test for Orpheus, since he snared her and trapped her down here like a songbird for his amusement? She stabs her trowel into the soil with uncharacteristic aggression. "Why? What do you even care where I go?"

"I don’t. But this is my wife’s garden, and I don’t need you trampling through it," Hades says slowly, picking up his jacket and putting back on. There's a warning in his voice. "I don't want to see you back here, understand?"

"Trampling through it? It was a wreck when I found it!" Eurydice snaps off her leather gardening gloves and, in a moment of _very_ poor judgement, lobs them as hard as she can at the king of the underworld. Her aim is off; they sail past his face and land unceremoniously in the heliotropes. But the damage is done. "And it’s not like she’s here to see it!"

"Watch your tone, girl," Hades snaps.

Eurydice rises to her feet, fists clenched. "You can't just throw me away like this! You're the one who lured me here, you're the one who stopped me going home. I’m _your_ goddamn problem, and I'm not leaving this garden!"

A storm-cloud is gathering across Hades' face. When he next speaks, his voice is like thunder, like the clash and roar of the furnaces he built, slow and harsh and dreadful. "I own you," he says again. The inescapable truth. "If I say I want you out, then you will _stay_ out."

She's ready to spit more retorts, but then he grabs her arm and hauls her to the gate. She tries to wrench out of his steel grip, but he shoves her roughly out onto the concrete, so hard she stumbles and nearly falls. And then the king of the underworld slams the iron gates shut with a cold hard crash.

-

Driving the girl from his mind isn’t as easy as driving her from the garden. She sticks there like a stubborn itch, returning to him every time he allows his mind to wander from his work.

Persephone would tell him he’s being cruel, if she were here.

It wasn’t cruelty though. Oh, Hades was often cruel – it was he who’d conceived of those punishments for Tantalos and Sisyphos – but this was not one of those times. But how could he explain the tangle of emotions in his gut? There was no hostility there. Certainly, Eurydice surprised him, and maybe caught him a little off-guard. That girl, of all people, in his wife’s garden, of all places. He could almost hear Persephone’s laughter: no running from your feelings now, husband. But this wasn’t anger. It was something too close for comfort, an unsettling tugging at his heartstrings.

Pity, he decides, while he paces the landing overlooking the factory floor. Pity for the poor lost girl, waiting for her poet to come back to her. Pity for a girl abandoned. Pity for a girl waiting, waiting, waiting, not knowing when her lover will return.

There’s your problem, Persephone would tell him, with that acerbic twisting smile of hers. The girl’s just like you.

-

Anger is a bright, active emotion, and Eurydice feels more herself than she has in a long, long time. Anger doesn’t happen _to_ you, unlike the black sorrow that used to sit cold in her gut. Anger is a creature of the heart and lungs, something vibrant and pulsing and _alive_ , and when she seizes hold of it she feels whole and wonderfully human.

-

She doesn’t stay away, obviously. She finds the gate locked, and two hound-dogs circling outside, those vicious mangy things that Hades keeps at his heel. Wicked teeth and beady black eyes, oh, she remembers how Orpheus led her past others like this at the wall. They didn't bark, just let low growls sit soft in their throats, black lips drawn back from those teeth. They won't let her near the gate, she already knows, but she tries anyway, and it ends with her skittering back from snapping jaws, heart in her throat.

Maybe, a lifetime ago, she would have cut her losses and found some other sanctuary for herself, far away from Hades and his stupid rules. But now, Eurydice thinks of Orpheus, standing up the king even as his voice trembled. She thinks of his music, unravelling the god right in front of them. Hades is just an old man. Contract or not, Eurydice knows she doesn't deserve to be treated like this.

She goes to his offices. There are queues of chattering shades, fresh off the train or wandered in from Asphodel, looking for work. They don't protest when she cuts ahead of them, marches up that iron staircase to the huge double-doors sealed tight against prying eyes. She knocks, once. Then a second time. A minute later, a third.

"You can't ignore me forever," she calls, even though she's not sure if he's even in there.

"He can—"

"—and he will—"

"—he's got all eternity," the Fates tell her. Eurydice nearly jumps out of her skin at their sudden appearance behind her. She whirls around, eying them with suspicion.

"Tell me where he is," she says.

"No," they all say in unison.

"Fine. I can wait," Eurydice says with a shrug, moving to the wall and leaning up against it.

"Mr Hades is a busy man—"

“—with a lot of people waiting on him—"

"—and you're holding up the line," they tell her, advancing on her until she's forced back onto the stairs. She tries to shove back past them, but they block her easily. Steadily, they walk her backwards, step by step. Eurydice wants to cry out in frustration.

Above, the great doors open, and Hades emerges. He doesn’t see her, turning away down a corridor before she can call out. Heart hammering, she darts forward, slipping under one of the Fate’s arms, dashing back up the stairs. “Wait—”

A vice-like hand on her shoulder yanks her back; the Fates converge on her like the Furies themselves, impossibly swift, teeth bared in identical snarls. Hades disappears down the hall. Goddammit. A moment later, the Fates haul her down the stairs.

Fine. _Fine_. Eurydice won’t quit. Screw that old man, she’ll just find her own way past the dogs. He has to have some key or dog whistle hidden somewhere.

The Fates won’t let her back in to his office, but that just means they’re not watching his house. Later, Eurydice finds herself staring up at the huge doors, cast carefully with intricate reliefs. No one answers when she knocks, so she decides to take that as an open invitation. And all it takes is to scale a drainpipe to reach the second-floor balcony, where the latches on the windows are _just_ loose enough to slide open. Eurydice hates to admit it, but she’s had a bit of practise at this particular skill. Hey, a girl’s gotta eat, right? Honesty was a luxury she’d rarely had.

Hades’ home is big and grand and opulent. Every inch of floorspace is covered by plush Afghan carpets. The furniture is all carved from dark wood, lit in the curious orange glow of his electric lamps. The balcony leads into a bedroom. Eurydice runs a hand over the heavy embroidered bedcover, before moving into the hall. Between the lamps, huge oil paintings hang on the walls. Eurydice expects some grim battle-scene or stuffy portraits, but instead she finds idyllic pastoral scenes: lush rendered orchards and grassy fields, summer fruit and laughter. Aspirational, or nostalgic, perhaps? It’s hard not to notice Persephone’s hand in this particular part of the décor.

She pads down the hall, checking each door until she finds what has to be the study. The lights are off, with just enough light filtering through the curtains to see by. She slips inside and pulls the door shut behind her. The desk is piled high with paper and books, ledgers open to carefully handwritten tables in neat, blocky print. Hades likes to keep busy.

She rifles through the desk drawers before moving on to the rest of the furniture. She finds a heavy ring of keys sitting on a bookshelf, which jangles hideously as she picks it up. God, what the hell did he need so many keys for? She sighs in frustration, and keeps hold of them, ready to resume her search for anything else of use.

Then the lights flicker on above her. Hades stands in the doorway – no waistcoat today, and a glass of bourbon in one hand – with a look of utter exhaustion on his face. He sighs heavily, and rumbles, “If I’d known you were going to be such a nuisance, I’d never have brought you down here in the first place.”

Eurydice reels back a bit at his sudden appearance, but recovers quickly. “Well, you blew your chance to let me go.”

She’s struck a nerve. Hades flinches, just a little. He must have had a few drinks already, to let her see that. “Actually, your poet did,” he says, and takes a swig of the bourbon. Eurydice glares at him, because really, he’s right.

“What does the garden matter to you anyway?” she demands instead. The keys jangle loudly in her hands. “You trapped me here, the least you could do is let me plant some goddamn flowers.”

It feels as if they’ve had this same argument before. Hades knocks back the rest of his drink and shoots back, “Trapped you? You chose this. I offered you a deal and _you_ accepted it. You have no right to go trampling through my things because you’ve changed your mind.”

That’s not fair, Eurydice wants to protest, but he goes on.

“I could send you to the mines. I could bury you so deep your poet would never find you again. But I withhold a few square feet of land from you, and you pitch a fit like a spoilt child?” Hades’ voice lowers to that deep, subterranean resonance. “I have been far more lenient than I ought to have been with you.”

“So what? Then _do it_!” Eurydice snarls. “Send me to the mines, stick me on a twenty-hour shift, make me shovel coal until my back breaks! Come on!”

He sets the glass down with a sharp thud. Her words hang in the air, and Eurydice suddenly feels a flash of fear beneath her bravado. She’s called his bluff – it was a bluff, right? Suddenly she’s not sure. She doesn’t move, as Hades walks over to the decanter and pours out another drink.

“You won’t do it, will you?” Eurydice says, fighting to keep her voice from shaking. She tries to summon up that stupid reckless courage again. She thinks of Orpheus, standing up to the king for her. “Why? What is it about _me_?”

“Because I know how it feels to wait down here alone,” Hades says sharply, and it’s like the whole world has just shuddered to the left by an inch. Eurydice’s breath catches in her throat. “I know what it’s like to wait for someone.”

Of all the possible answers, this was the most frightening. The comparison between them stings. But god, he’s right. He’s right. Orpheus and Persephone above. Eurydice and the king of the dead, counting eternity below.

"You only have to wait another month," she says, finally, when her head has stopped spinning enough for her thoughts to finally settle. "I have a lifetime."

"And once your poet returns, he'll never leave your side," Hades says, taking another drink. "I envy you."

Eurydice sets down the keys and swipes a hand through her hair. She doesn't know what to think. She feels raw and twisted up inside, without the strength to feel angry anymore. All there is, is an awful ache, in her bones and in her throat, in that empty hollow in her heart. Orpheus, her dear Orpheus, all alone without her. And all she can do is wait.

This feels like a truce. The mood of the room is low and sombre, the two of them ready to wallow deep into their respective solitudes. Hades is contemplating his drink with a faraway look.

She is off-kilter. She walks past him to the door, and swallows. “You should take Persephone to see the garden when she comes back,” she says. “Tell her you fixed it up for her.”

And she leaves, without looking back.

-

She finds herself in Asphodel again. She’s in half a mind to walk out among the fields and let herself forget everything, to join the shades in their listless torpor. But she promised Orpheus she would wait for him.

She sings his song softly to herself, just to prove she still remembers the melody. The dead part around her while she walked, and this time she pushes on, even she feels their chattering grow loud around her. But then she feels a hand on her shoulder. She jolts away in fright, heart racing.

“W—what song is that?” a man asks, his mouth moving thickly around the syllables. Oh, it must have been centuries since he’s last spoken aloud. He blinks at her with wild eyes.

The dead are looking at her. No longer voiceless, and no longer unseeing. Eurydice suddenly hears Orpheus’ melody echoed back at her, softly. And again, and again.

“It goes like this,” Eurydice tells the man, taking a deep breath and steeling herself. And she begins to sing, properly. She’ll never have Orpheus’ voice, but his song has a life of its own. Her feet carry her through the fields, the dead flocking around her, brushing up against her shoulders. Too close for comfort, but Eurydice takes one look at the wonder and light in their faces, and pushes on.

“Where is it from?” a girl asks her, when she’s finished. Eurydice crawls up onto a small rock, for fear that the spirits might swallow her. All around, the tune still echoes, as the ghosts repeat it to themselves. Eurydice feels a swell of love for her Orpheus, seeing the he’s brought to the land of the dead.

“A brave poet wrote it,” she tells the girl. “A living poet, named Orpheus.”

And she tells them a story, about a boy who crossed the Styx to rescue his love from death itself. She tells them how he sung this song for Hades, and it moved the king so much that he allowed them to go free – under one condition.

“Eurydice would follow Orpheus out of the underworld,” she says. “But only as long as he did not look back at her.”

“Did they make it?”

“Did they get out?”

So many voices. The hope burns alive on their faces. Oh, they don’t know. They don’t know who she is. She shuts her eyes for a moment, and then nods, with a sad smile. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, they made it out.”

Whispers spill out around her. Wonderment, astonishment, awe.

She adds, swallowing up the growing lump in her throat: “But they didn’t abandon the other dead. Orpheus left us with a gift: a song, so that we might remember the sun and sky. So that we might remember his story.” She reaches out and takes the hand of the girl standing beside her. “Sing the song. Sing it as loud as you can. Make sure everyone hears it, and no one will forget.”

Asphodel rings soft with long-unused voices echoing the melody. Eurydice weeps, finally, sitting on that rock, listening to her lover’s song fill up the world.

-

She takes the song to everyone she can. Traces the bank of the Styx, humming it to the lost souls that languish at the edge. She’ll slip a few coins into their hands, for the ticket. Let them find a better afterlife than this eternal fog. And if she thinks, occasionally, of the beautiful garden hidden among Hadestown’s concrete walls, she doesn’t let herself linger on it for long.

-

Winter draws close, and Hades grows restless. Waiting is interminable, and his patience fast evaporated along with his youth. He’s gotten into the habit of boarding the train whenever the mood struck him, but his wife’s words are enough to hold him fast, this time around. _Wait for me_.

He will. He promised. But this old habit isn’t going down without a fight, and he wrestles with it at every turn. He checks the clocks; he harasses Charon about the train. He stalks around his home in a foul mood, occasionally straying to the window where the edge of the garden is visible, cloistered in its walls.

 _Tell her you fixed it up for her_ , Eurydice had told him. Such unselfishness! He’d half-expected her to throw the keys at him and demand he unlock it for her, but instead she’d just left. Had he upset her, by drawing a comparison between them? She must hate him. He would not blame her if she did; he has played the part of a tyrant rather well.

Persephone always seems to linger in the back of his mind, an insistent voice somewhere between a conscience and a devil on his shoulder. You get to know a person, after being married to them for eternity. And he knows that what would make Persephone happiest – beyond his patience, beyond rebuilding Hadestown, and beyond that garden – would be knowing that he had treated Eurydice with compassion.

The girl is tied inextricably to him and his marriage. She is the catalyst for all of it: for the poet, for the song, and now the restless wretched hope, pacing back and forth in his chest like a dog pawing at a closed door, while he waits for springtime to end. He can’t pretend she doesn’t exist. He can’t pretend she’s insignificant. She and Orpheus had bridged that rift between him and his wife, but it isn’t closed yet. Persephone could still grow cold on him once more, if he didn’t show her he’d truly changed his heart.

There are still a few days until the train departs. There is paperwork to be done, ledgers to be checked, inspections to be made, contracts to be signed before he goes. But they can wait for an hour or two. Hades turns away from the window and the garden, and picks up the heavy ring of keys from the mantel. He won’t make his old mistakes. Before law, before business, and before pride, Persephone must always come first.

-

There’s a part of the Styx where the current eddies and meanders. Ghosts of the unburied get stuck here, while they search for a way to cross without paying for their ticket. Shades drift and pool in the current, or sag against the rocks, sodden and despairing among the flotsam that billows with the shifting water.

Eurydice uses a long staff to ford the river, steadying herself while she picks her way over the slick black rocks. She crouches down to take one of the withered hands clawing desperately at the stone, and holds it firm while she sings.

Orpheus’ song is like an old friend, now. She’s heard it so often now, sung it so constantly, that she’s not sure she could ever forget it even if she tried to, even if she wandered out into Asphodel and lay down in the grass until the earth closed over her face. Warmth fills the air at the sound. The water slows, the vicious currents pull back. The spirits pick themselves out of the water, echoing her with soft, keening voices. She lifts the woman whose hand she’s holding to her feet, and helps her up on the rocks.

It is a kind of magic, seeing light in long-dead eyes. Eurydice pulls a pouch from her belt and presses coins into every outstretched hand; her wages are finally being put to good use. By the time she trawls back to shore, the purse is nearly empty, and the lost shades are making their way to the station on the other side. She’s soaked up to her thighs in the icy water, her hands trembling a little against the cold, but Orpheus’ song warms her to her bones.

But she’s not alone. Standing on the bank is Hades, hands in his pockets, watching her with a slight frown. Eurydice approaches him warily, wiping her hands on her overalls.

“You were singing to them,” Hades says. It’s not a question.

“Yeah. It helps them remember,” Eurydice says, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why are you here?”

He doesn’t seem surprised by her unfriendliness. He clears his throat. “I know I haven’t exactly been hospitable,” he says, and with some amazement, Eurydice realises the god of the dead is trying to apologise to her. “I was thinking about what you said when we last spoke. My wife would not want you to be barred from her garden.”

Eurydice exhales, with a little nervous laugh. Maybe a week ago, she’d have been ready to crow victory at that. But with Orpheus’ song lingering in her heart, she feels a strange swell of something softer. Compassion, perhaps, for an old man who misses his wife.

-

The lock has gone, and so has that horrible dog. Eurydice has her garden back. Victory smells like damp earth and those worn leather gloves, once she fishes them out from the heliotropes.

-

She’ll take Orpheus to see it when he gets here. Take his hands and lead him through the gates, watch his face light up in delight at the brilliant carnations glowing soft beneath the artificial sun. And of course, a table and chair. She’s already scavenged the cypress wood for it, started speaking with some of the workers who were once carpenters about helping her with the plans. Sometimes, while she works in the flower beds, she imagines looking up to see him sitting there, bent over his notebook, lost in thought as he composes.

The reality always comes creeping back in, though. Orpheus is not here, and she must wait a lifetime until he returns. She hopes he’ll grow old and happy, and die peacefully. She hopes he doesn’t mourn her for too long. She’s never been a patient girl, but she can wait for this. So she pours her hours into the garden, in the hope that she won’t notice them passing.

-

Persephone returns on the train. Eurydice knows it before she sees her, because all around her the flowers lift their heads and bloom open, as if summer has come rushing in all at once. Persephone bounds through the gates with her husband on her arm, crowing in delight at the flowers. Her curls fall wild over her shoulders and that brilliant green dress flashes beneath the artificial sun. Beside her, Hades is smiling for once.

Eurydice stumbles to her feet, pulling off her gloves, but next thing she knows Persephone is sweeping her into a tight hug. She smells like gin and fresh-budding blossoms and ripening fruit. Eurydice is terrified she’s going to get grime all over that beautiful dress, but Persephone holds her tight all the same. When they part, the spring goddess brushes the hair out of Eurydice’s eyes and studies her with a pained look. “Oh, sister, he misses you so much.”

Eurydice’s been so engrossed in her tasks that she hadn’t even thought that Persephone would have spoken with Orpheus. But of course she has, of course she has. Her heart stutters in her chest. “Is he alright?”

“He mourns you terribly. But he’s started singing again,” Persephone says, with a sad smile. She brushes a hand through Eurydice’s hair again. “He sings of you.”

Emotion wells up in Eurydice’s throat. She swallows, unable to speak for fear that she might burst into tears. She just nods, and Persephone squeezes her hands.

“You’ve done such beautiful work here,” she tells her, looking around at the garden. “Thank you.”

Eurydice feels a little surprised, that Hades hasn’t at least taken partial credit for the restoration. She looks over Persephone’s shoulder at him, but he’s studiously avoiding her gaze.

“Love is a terribly mortal thing. Us gods tend to forget how to do it, over time. We need to be reminded every so often,” Persephone continues. Then she shoots Eurydice a wicked grin. “Which reminds me, I need a moment alone with my husband. If you’ll excuse us, sister.”

And hearing that makes Eurydice feel a bit like she’s walked in on her parents in a private moment, so she clears her throat and busies herself with pruning a particularly persistent patch of wisteria while the gods leave.

-

“I can tell you more about him, if you like,” Persephone offers one day, while they sit at the new table in the garden and share a drink (or two). The goddess is much more sober, these days, but that hasn’t stopped her celebrating with her usual enthusiasm.

Eurydice sips her drink (and holds back a cough, god, this stuff could probably double as weed-killer). She hasn’t stopped thinking about Orpheus, not once since Persephone’s return. She’s retold his story again and again to everyone she speaks with, determined that his bravery and his fidelity shouldn’t go forgotten. She’s sung his melody again and again and again. But she thinks for a moment, and then shakes her head. “I think I’d like him to tell me himself, when he finally gets here,” she says.

Persephone nods in approval, and reaches over to squeeze her hand. “Sometimes we have to go it alone for a bit, right?”

A double meaning. Persephone could easily be talking about herself, as much as Eurydice or Orpheus. Caught in that liminality, between the dead and the living. Parted from her lover by the fabric of the world itself.

“When you go back, will you tell him something from me?” Eurydice asks. The gin is making her awfully sentimental. “Tell him that we still sing his songs down here. Tell him that no matter what, he didn’t come down here for nothing.”

-

The day Persephone leaves again, she finds Hades in her garden. They’ve barely spoken – part of Eurydice wonders if he’s a little embarrassed at being caught doing something kind. That seems like the sort of thing he’d do.

“You’re back,” she says, setting down her bag on the table. “I thought you were avoiding me.”

“I’ve been busy,” Hades says. He looks at her a little pointedly. “There’s been a sudden influx of souls from Asphodel looking for work.”

Ah. Eurydice had wondered if he’d trace that one back to her. With Hadestown’s reforms, the city was suddenly much more appealing than the dull nothing of the fields outside. It wasn’t just factories and mines anymore – people were actually _living_ here. Artists and craftspeople could suddenly remember their trades. There were painters and sculptors, weavers and dancers, and best of all, musicians, setting up shop at every corner. It was hardly surprising that many of the newly-lucid shades she’d woken up wanted entrance. The underworld was coming to life, and Hadestown was at the centre of it all, thanks to Orpheus.

Eurydice shrugs, feeling a little swell of pride. Seeing the joy Orpheus’ song brought people was well worth Hades’ potential ire. “I’ve been busy too.”

Hades’ lips twist in dry amusement. “I have something for you,” he says, pulling a folded sheet of paper from his jacket. He hands it to her, and she unfolds it.

It’s a contract. The one she’d signed a year-and-a-half ago. She looks up at Hades, questioning.

“Thought it was time I made amends,” he says, and then he holds up a silver lighter. “All the others got new contracts. They’re their own people too. You ought to join them.”

Maybe it’s more symbolic than anything else – after all, she’s dead. Her soul is rooted here by law of nature, more powerful and potent than any contract. But she still takes the light with a smile; lights up the paper and lets it drop into a metal bucket where the flames eat away at it. She’ll take whatever freedom the world can afford.

She glances over at Hades, who’s contemplating the calla lilies with a distant look. The flowers already seem to have wilted a little, the magic of Persephone’s presence gradually fading with her absence. The two of them have long waits ahead of them. But it won’t be forever. And besides—

“They’re waiting for us, you know,” Eurydice tells Hades, letting hope bloom in her chest like a beautiful flower, like the warmth of Orpheus’ song. “Up there, they’re waiting too.”

[1] This is a figure of speech. In his line of work, Hades is usually more surprised to see the living than the dead.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are always appreciated :))  
> also u can find me on tumblr @odyssaeus for more greek myth content and aesthetic bs. thanks for reading!


End file.
